As I hear you explain this, this is what I get (hope you don't mind me summing things up):

1. It's not that planetary alignments cause sunspots through tidal forces.

2. It's a certain resonance involving planetary alignments, with a periodicity of around 10.5 years.

3. The resonance differs depening on how many planets are aligned, where, when, etc.

4. In effect, they're "ringing the sun's bell."

5. If the resonance is in tune with the sun's current frequency, it adds to it's ringing, producing more eddies in the sun which lead to more sunspots (solar maximums). If it's out of tune, it well quell it's ringing (less eddies, less sunspots --> Maunder Minimum).

If this is what you're saying, I get it, and agree it's very theoretically possible.

I also hear you're saying this can apply to planets with non-solid cores, and that the general level of volcanic activity can also be affected by the same "ringing" effect involving planetary resonance.

I liken this effect to shaking a small flagpole. If you're pushing and pulling just ahead of it's natural resonance, it's flexing back and forth increasess. If you're oscillations are out of tune with the flagpoles, it dampens the flexing, eventually bringing it to a stop.

It doesn't take much effort to cause a significant effect. Just well-timed input oscillations over a long time.

Years ago, back in college (and for whatever unknown reason...) I began some input oscillations with a light post, causing it to flex back and forth. This sucker was large and designed to withstand winds upwards of 200 mph. But after about a minute of input, it was flexing back and forth so much that it broke! <duck and run...>

I never thought THAT would happen.

But it proved a point: very small, well-timed inputs to any system which can "vibrate" and increase those vibrations to the point where it can have catostrauphic results.

And again, to summarize, it's not that planetary alignment causes tidal forces which cause sunspots. It's that when the resonance of tidal forces due to many peaks and troughs of planetary alignments match a natural resonance within the sun, it starts ringing it like a bell (or flexing it back and forth like a lightpost), and that's what causes sunspots, affects the liquid innards of other planets, etc.

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If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.